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Plastic Fantastic? Would you go under the knife?

At the risk of attracting the wrath of many dozens of North Western women not to mention brides, I’ve been enjoying some success in my efforts to lose weight. Before you begin fashioning Vanessa-shaped voodoo dolls, hear this: I love my food. Yeah, I know everyone says that but I need you all to understand that when I say I love my food, I mean I LOVE my food quite possibly more than I love anything else in this world, including my fiancé. Sorry, not sorry as the young people say.

Do you also know those conversations in which people discuss whether they have a savoury tooth or a sweet tooth? I have all the teeth. I have a tooth for Chinese, another for Italian. I have a cake tooth and a Mars Bar tooth. I have a tooth that wonders what it would be like to put a Twirl bar in a cheese toastie (if any of you have tried this, please tell me) and I have a tooth that would hunt down an Indian takeaway with the dedication and skill of the Terminator.

So, now you’ve gathered how much I love food so then hopefully you can imagine how hard it has been for me to stop eating it. Obviously I am still eating but the stuff I eat now is less food and more foliage. I’m talking salads. Salads for lunch and salads for dinner – sometimes I have soup. The joys! Why oh why am I going to these extreme levels of restriction you might ask – for one day, my wedding day in September.

Losing weight is the number one goal of many women planning a wedding. Whether it’s a few pounds or a few stone, brides to be find themselves striving to alter those scales – sometimes drastically – before their big day. It made me wonder what else we future brides are willing to alter. Harley Medical Centre has reported a 15% rise in women booking “pre-wedding surgical procedures” which can include anything from nose augmentation, to breast enhancement.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not sitting here being Miss Judgie McJudgerson – far from it. If a girl wants to give her “girls” a bit of oomph then more power to her! Heaven knows I have plenty of body parts I’d like to drastically alter. In fact, never mind alter, I have parts I’d just like to erase and start again. Anyone know a doctor who can do that? No? Raging.

What troubles me is the fact that some of these women are undergoing life changing alterations all for one day. Yeah, I hear you, “but the photographs are for life!” I get it, I do – but so is that new chin! I imagine spending all that money would probably leave you looking fantastic but then there’s always the worry that you reach the top of the aisle and your groom is forced to ask “who the hell are you and what have you done with my Sinead?” Not the ideal welcome is it?

It seems to me that if your lovely man has gone and asked you to marry him – he did that knowing you at your unenhanced self – wonky nose and pankcake boobs and all!! If you were good enough then, you’re surely going to be good enough after a skilled makeup artist and a hair wizard has their way with you and let’s not forget about the fact you’ll be wearing the most stunning dress of your life.

Obviously I’m jumping on the self-improvement train myself, you think I’d be writing this with a carrot stick in my mouth otherwise? Hell to the no! What worries me more than the actual surgeries brides might be exposing themselves to is the emphasis those girls are putting on what will essentially be a (really short) day in their lives. It’s the expectation that everything about the day has to be a supreme level of utter perfection that seems to me to unachievable. Yeah, your new nose looks brilliant but I have a feeling you were upstaged by the flower girl getting sick on the dance floor. We’re talking twenty-four hours ladies and we all know he’s going to see you, makeup-free in your onsie eating a mince pie in one bite by Christmas! So, I’ve decided that the only knife coming near me will be the one I use to cut the cake and you better believe I’ll be eating a piece (or two) of that.